A demographic tool has become an economic one, treating a demographic challenge as both an economic crisis and a basis for pessimism justifying drastic reductions in bedrock government programs, including those supporting children and the poor. Even at state and local levels, the aging boomer demographic is repeatedly blamed for our economic difficulties. That is … Continue reading
Babies born from 2010 to 2012 can now expect to live to 79 if they are boys and 82.8 if they are girls Continue reading
Life expectancy among less-educated white women is decreasing while their better-educated peers are gaining longevity, a new study finds. According to the researchers, joblessness is one key factor in the the trend. The other is smoking. “Mortality is declining for high-educated women, but is increasing for low-educated women,” said study co-author Jennifer Karas Montez, a … Continue reading
Everyone knows that human life expectancies have been improving. But just how extraordinary and incomparable that improvement has been is not widely understood. Demographers Oskar Burgera, Annette Baudischa, and James W. Vaupel offer two remarkable sets of comparisons in “Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context,” which appears in a recent issue of the Proceedings of … Continue reading